The Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana, better known as the SGSY programme, was restructured into the National Rural Livelihoods Mission by the Government of India in 2010. This reconfiguration has been a result of recommendations from stakeholder consultations with state governments, civil society...

A rich pool of barefoot SHG animators
called ‘Sanghatikas’ were already trained under the SGSY in 2008.
It was decided to utilize the services of these Sanghatikas in 5-8
blocks of Wardha and the nearby districts. The 72 Sanghatikas have
brought in a significant qualitative improvement in the SHG movement
in Wardha.

‘Wardhini’ rounds were organized in
‘Babhulgain’ and ‘Ralegaon’ blocks of Yavatmal. ‘Wardhinis’
stay in the villages for 15 days at a stretch for community
mobilization. As per the plan they will complete 3 such rounds during
April 2014 till June 2014. (one round per month).

9 active women out of 77 Wardhinis were
identified as trainers during the course of training processes. The
task of a Wardhini trainer is to train the newly identified community
resource persons and book keepers from villages of other districts.
The training process also involved village immersion of Wardhinis
where they were attached with SERP-CRPs. This exercise helped
Wardhinis understand the SERP working model and relate it with the
context of Maharashtra State.

Achievements

Based on their learnings during the
training programs, Wardhinis were able to form 4-5 new SHGs (in every
village that they were assigned for) in the course of 7 days.

Wardhinis also worked on reviving the
old SHGs as well as strengthening the existing groups.

Wardhinis are also putting special
focus to bring the excluded and vulnerable members of the community
within the unmbrella of Umed. They also have formed special SHGs of
widows and PWDs.

They Wardhinis are optimistic about
forming more number of new SHGs, reviving other old ones and
strengthening the existing ones in the villages

Each Wardhini was given a separate ‘IEC
kit’ it which included reference material, instructions, schedules,
stationeries for their ready reference in the field.

Umed has entered into a partnership
with the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), Andhra
Pradesh since 2012 to lead social mobilization and institution
building processes in 8 blocks of 4 districts in Maharashtra
including Jalna, Nandurbar, Gadhchiroli and Yavatmal. The core
objective of the partnership is to replicate tried and tested
strategies from Andhra Pradesh to mobilize poor rural women in
Maharashtra and organize them into self managed institutions known as
Self Help Groups (SHG). Trained community cadres from SERP have
undertaken intensive field based mobilization rounds over the past 2
years to form new Self Help Groups and revive old or defunct SHGs in
select clusters across 8 blocks. While Project Resource Persons (PRP)
are positioned in clusters, Community Resource Persons (CRP)
undertake periodic mobilization rounds of 45 days each. These
collectives are organized around 5 key tenets known as the
‘Panchasutri’. The primary focus of the resource block strategy
is on social mobilization and institution building in a manner that
women are able to build and strengthen their own institutions and
collectively access financial services, rights and entitlements. The
distinctive feature of the SERP resource block strategy is
identification and capacity building of community resource persons as
book keepers and community mobilisers to ensure self reliance of
SHGs.

Currently, CRPs have completed 8 rounds of mobilization. As an
innovative strategy, SERP also facilitated a round of mobilization by
CRPs from the Chenchu tribe of Andhra Pradesh. Very recently,
the Chenchu CRPs have facilitated preparation of Micro Credit
Plans (MCP) in blocks in Nandurbar that capture food security needs
of tribal women in Nandurbar, especially during monsoons. MCPs
have been developed in a participatory manner for few SHGs.

The current focus of the resource block
strategy is on aggregating SHGs into Village Organizations (VO) and
building their capacities. Facilitating MCP preparation and CIF
utilization are other processes being supported under the
partnership.

National Rural Livelihoods Mission is being implemented in Maharashtra through 3 strategies-Intensive, Non-intensive and Semi intensive. Non-intensive and semi-intensive strategy has been introduced from 2013-14. Non & semi intensive strategy is being implemented in 315 blocks of 33 districts through district rural development agencies
(DRDAs). These strategies will do the necessary groundwork for phased implementation of intensive
strategy. A separate non-intensive cell has been created in state mission management unit for overall
coordination, supervision and monitoring. Read More